Suburban Landscape Function: An Investigation into the Creation and Recreation of Suburban Landscapes

One of the most topical subjects relevant to suburbs in western cities in recent times has been how dramatically they have changed as a result of market demand for a different suburban form (Gleeson 2006).The controversy emerging from this change has been the apparent disconnection between the expert opinion of what the suburban landscape should look like, and what the community want the suburb to look like. Central to this disconnection is the concept of what the landscape is. That is what does it look like and what scales of time and space should be contemplated when a community addresses this enquiry. To reconcile some of these questions requires a means of communicating the expert view to a community in a way that the lay person can conceptualise (Howard 2004). By closing this gap, the discussion about the future suburban landscape may be renegotiated to incorporate the desires and aspirations of a community at differing temporal and spatial scales. This paper seeks to position design lead research in the context of the changing Australian suburb. My research will develop a method that engages the community in a participatory way which leverages new knowledge about the suburb. This will require us to test a range of methods to understand the landscape. The purpose of this approach is to gain new understandings of landscape that become a communication by the community to the design and planning profession.